Daily Archives: September 13, 2009

The NYT front webpage makes no mention of the march on Washington yesterday. There is a story to be found if you click “politics” and look around, but nothing on the front page (the dead tree edition has a picture on the front page, an article buried on p.37). So what does merit the Time’s attention? Cavities in children (caused by Bush and big business), the NY Jets – they won, isn’t that happy news? And the search for the missing Yale student. All important stories, certainly, but there was a time when the paper prided itself on covering national news.

And here’s this email from Clark Hoyt, NYT Public Editor, reponding to critics who felt the Times ignored the Van Jones story:

My own view is that the Jones story was overblown. While he clearly once described himself as a communist, by the time he wrote his best-selling book, “The Green Collar Economy,” he was a champion of entrepreneurial capitalism. But conservatives, particularly Glenn Beck, were making much of Jones’s past statements, Republicans in Congress were decrying the appointment of “czars” as a way around the Senate confirmation process, and all of it was a story worth noting. By passing on it as it was developing, The Times allowed its readers to be blindsided by a resignation seemingly from nowhere and reinforced the impression of conservatives that the newspaper is tone deaf to their concerns or, worse, deliberately ignores them.Gee, Clark, ya think?

Someone named Melinda Katz interrupted my football viewing yesterday with an ad – she’s running for City Comptroller, and good for her, but I was struck by her vow to “make Wall Street pay its fair share”. What a dunce.

Securities industry profits account for almost 9 percent of tax revenue for New York City and about 20 percent for the state, according to a report released yesterday by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. While comprising 5 percent of the city’s employment, financial firms generate about 23 percent of its personal income. Every Wall Street job produces two more in the city economy, said Rae Rosen, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

I had never heard of this woman before seeing her ad and I have no idea whether she is a viable candidate or just some fringe nut job but the fact that her advisers think bashing Wall Street is a vote- getter suggests that many New Yorkers are still living in a dream world where they can spend as they please and count on unspecified “rich people” to pay for it. Just like the Tooth Fairy. Just like Hartford.

I mentioned this two weeks ago but today Greenwich Time has caught up with the story: our legislature has stolen the money donated by citizens to the Preserve the Sound and all other special environmental funds – 20 something – that citizens were persuaded to donate to under the promise that their money would go for specific causes. No one with any sense would voluntarily give money to the Hartford thieves but lots of well-meaning, trusting souls did anyway, and now they’ve been burned. Good; the more the greed and duplicity of our politicians is exposed, the few people will think we need them.